We library-goers are in the know: Reading to your little ones from an early age can provide an early literacy boost. And the earlier you start, the bigger the boost! Of course, for parents of more than one young child, the two or three year gulf separating bouncing baby from precocious tot can complicate communal story times. Baby has a penchant for crumpling pages in picture books. Your toddler is easily bored by the simple words and lack of plot typical of board books.

Enter Charles Reasoner.

This veteran author/illustrator features indestructible reads which are nevertheless engaging for older siblings. Bright, full-color images and sturdy board pages will hold a baby’s attention, while die-cut pages and rhyming text will keep older siblings amused. Eschewing the traditional rectangular shape, Reasoner’s playful curvilinear pages combine to mimic a three-dimensional picture, inviting young readers to enter the book and explore its interior scenes in greater detail. Beyond the colorful images and rhymes, Reasoner’s books also boast some surprisingly subtle touches, such as background character comments and seek-and-find opportunities for older children.

Meet 11-year-old Ellie. She feels like something of a misfit in her artistic family. Her theater director mother and actor father wonder why she doesn’t have the theater gene, and Ellie worries that she’ll never find her passion in life. Adding to her loneliness, she misses elementary school and her best friend Brianna, who suddenly doesn’t seem to realize she’s even alive. Things aren’t going great for Ellie, and then Melvin appears.

Melvin is 13, grouchy and likes to wear old man’s clothes. He only wants to eat Chinese food. He argues with Ellie’s mom about the man she’s dating. He is forced to go to Ellie’s school and he gets detention for yelling about science. In fact, he sounds suspiciously like her scientist grandfather, but how could it be possible?

Through Melvin, Ellie discovers her hidden passion all along: science. She learns about famous scientists like Salk, Oppenheimer, Curie and Pasteur. She goes on madcap adventures and failed heists. She asks some difficult questions: are all scientific discoveries good for everyone? What happens if they’re not?

Written by three-time Newbery Honor-winning author Jennifer L. Holm, The Fourteenth Goldfish is making itself known on the Newbery Medal blogs as a front-runner for the prize in January. Told with heart, humor and mischief, this is a must-read for all young scientists starting to discover the world on their own and for the adults who want to cultivate the wonder of lifelong learning. It teaches us not to just believe in the impossible, but to believe in the possible!

Dr. Mütter began his career as a surgeon and teacher at Jefferson College of Medicine in the middle of the 19th century at a time when anesthesia was not used during surgery and sterilization was haphazard at best. Mütter was determined to remedy those situations while focusing on using his talents to aid the physically deformed. As an innovator of plastic surgery techniques, he was also an expert on burns and cleft palates. Detailed accounts of actual surgeries performed by Mütter are peppered throughout the book and add to the compelling narrative. A character outside the operating room, Mütter wore colorful silk suits and cavalierly added an umlaut to his name. He was bitterly disliked by rivals who eschewed his ideas, but beloved by students who welcomed his interactive approach to lectures.

Sadly, the charismatic and talented Mütter died at 48, but through his speeches and lectures Aptowicz is able to reveal the complexity of Mütter’s character, his compassion and the lasting impact he had on the medical profession. In his lifetime, Mütter amassed a personal collection of almost 2,000 unique medical items, including models, illustrations and preserved anomalies. Among the objects he collected were skulls from around the world. Mütter donated his entire collection of medical curiosities to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and The Mütter Museum opened in 1863. The Museum now boasts a collection of more than 25,000 items which includes sections of Albert Einstein’s brain and the tumor from Grover Cleveland’s jaw.

We all have that friend who doesn’t have a filter and says whatever she thinks. Blogger Jen Mann’s new book People I Want to Punch in the Throat: Competitive Crafters, Drop-Off Despots and Other Suburban Scourges is just like sitting down next to that friend and listening (and laughing) as she tells it like it is. Mann, whose writing style has been called “Erma Bombeck with F Bombs,” takes on modern inconveniences, marriage and motherhood with humor and sarcasm. Mann explains why she covets a minivan (a.k.a. mobile command center), the danger of wearing pajamas in the school pickup line, the complexities of enrolling your kids in summer camp and the challenges of navigating playgroup politics.

Promising young voices in modern literary fiction are hard to come by, which makes Justin Taylor a man who deserves more recognition. In his newest collection Flings: Stories, Taylor confronts the awkward truths of adult life in stories centered around people who share a collective desire to be genuinely good, despite their misguided tendencies.

Both the titular story “Flings” and its continuation “After Ellen” follow people who are ensnared in the directionless, bleak traps of uncertainty that riddle our mid-20s. As friends, they live hollow lives in which they careen through dead-end jobs and relationships while waiting for what they perceive to be their real adult lives to begin. In the meantime, they’re left celebrating their miseries with compassion in their own beautifully tragic ways.

The more light-hearted "Sungold” stars Brian, a 30-something manager and bookkeeper at an organic pizza place. After nearly suffering heatstroke while wearing a questionably shaped purple mushroom costume in front of the restaurant, he gets busted cooking the books by a girl who happens to be there looking for a job. Her name is Appolinaria Pavlovna Sungold (seriously), and she knows what's up; she promises her silence in exchange for regular shift hours and a percentage of Brian's stolen funds. Brian hires her on the spot as both an act of self-preservation and an act of defiance towards the store owner, who only hires attractive college girls who enjoy fashioning the collars of their tie-dyed uniforms into deep, dangerous Vs.

Taylor’s prose is brilliant, humorous and unwavering. His characters are marvels; both uniquely individual and equally empathetic, and united by their searches for things to fill the voids in their lives.

Caitlin Doughty grew up in Hawai’i, and early on became “functionally morbid” with death. As a girl, she witnessed a shocking accident at a shopping mall, which cemented her desire to better understand the afterlife, which she parlayed into her college study of medieval death rituals. In her book debut Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, Doughty brings this difficult but universal subject to light. Despite the dark and sometimes gory content, she conversationally illuminates her year at Westwind Cremation and Burial in Oakland, California, and what she has accomplished since. If you never before knew the methods (and secrets) of “dignified” body disposal, you will after reading this exceptional book.

Doughty sprinkles her text with plenty of food for thought, whether it be historical and cultural tidbits about death, body disposal and mourning in cultures throughout time and worldwide, or when she gives her strong opinions about what we in America are doing right and wrong when it comes to handling our mortality. She daydreamed that one day she would open a funeral practice called “La Belle Mort,” which would take the unnatural aspects out of the process, but instead make for an open discussion about death and the hereafter. A chapter focusing on women’s roles in mortality culture includes a passage reminding the reader that “every time a woman gives birth, she is creating not only a life, but also a death.”

The author discusses corpses of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the stillborn to the elderly, the suicides and the drug overdoses, those who died surrounded by loved ones and those who died alone. Host of her own YouTube series, Ask a Mortician, Doughty also discusses how unfortunate it is that so few people know the law with regard to their loved ones’ corpses, nor do they have a plan of action. A timeless memoir, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is both eye-opening and could start important topical discussions that too few of us are having.

In high school, Tsukuru was included in a tight-knit group of friends. Although they were inseparable, spending their free time volunteering and studying together, Tsukuru felt deficient in their presence. Ao, Aka, Kuro and Shiro are each shown with a distinctly vibrant essence. In comparison, Tsukuru felt colorless, yet satisfied to be a part of such a special assemblage. This circle remained unbroken until Tsukuru was ejected from the group during his second year of college. At first, he thinks his friends must be missing his messages but after countless awkward brushoffs from their families, the banishment is clear.

Not having the faintest clue as to why, Tsukuru thrusts himself into an existential depression which wears down both body and spirit. Plagued by fear of actually being a nonentity, he is reduced to an inert husk. In Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, we are taken on an enigmatic journey as an older Tsukuru sets out to discover the truth behind his exile. He soon encounters ghosts from the past, new acquaintances and lovers in an oscillating series of hallucination, memory and restless fantasy. Only Murakami, a master of magical realism, could conjure such pensive yet uneasy visions.

Oliver Harris’ ne’er do well detective Nick Belsey is in trouble again in the novel Deep Shelter. A random encounter with a speeding perpetrator leads Nick to an abandoned bomb shelter. Finding some crates of champagne as well as some heavy duty medically prescribed drugs, Nick thinks this might be the perfect party spot to take a female companion. When he does just this, the lights are extinguished and Nick’s date is kidnapped, apparently dragged away into a warren of tunnels that could go anywhere. Nick soon finds himself in the uncomfortable position of prime suspect and quite possibly in the middle of an extensive government cover-up that leads back as far as the Cold War. With little help and almost no resources, Nick races against the clock to try and recover the woman he lost.

Nick Belsey was introduced in Harris’ previous novel, Hollow Man. He is a likable character and a good investigator, albeit one that makes very bad decisions. Harris handles the element of suspense well, and Deep Shelter starts quickly and moves at a fast pace. The setting is also amazing and Nick travels from the busy streets of London to mysterious locations deep underground, hoping to find a discarded clue that might lead him in the right direction. The writing is solid; Harris has degrees in creative writing as well as English and Shakespeare studies, so readers who enjoy good descriptions and a sharp writing style will not be disappointed. Readers who enjoy this novel may want to try Stuart MacBride or Mark Billingham.

This book will make you a better writer. It will also make you a better collaborator. It will probably make you better at just about any endeavor that involves getting people excited about an idea. Words for Pictures: The Art and Business of Writing Comics and Graphic Novels is a book about becoming a comics industry professional by one of the comics industry’s biggest names. Brian Michael Bendis has written the most popular characters at Marvel in many of their most epic appearances, alongside many touted professionals in the industry.

That last point is the most important. This may be Bendis' project, but it's rarely Bendis' voice alone. The first chapter may be Writing 101 advice, but that stops quickly. Most of the book consists of Bendis interviewing other writers he's worked with on how to put books together, generate ideas and then act on them. From there, he launches into working with artists, from how he tries to bring out their best work to how to get the best collaborative results. What really sells this is that Bendis got 14 artists from the industry to give their side of the collaboration. What gets an artist excited? What's the right level of direction? When does the writer need to back off and let the artist do their job?

The end result is that it becomes clear that there are any number of ways to successfully work together. A springboard is set up for aspiring artists and writers to find their own methods. Bendis pulls a hat trick twice. He doesn't stop with artists. There's an entire section devoted to working with editors. The most valuable section may be Bendis' interview of his wife, who handles the business side of his art. This book could make a successful artist out of a starving one and that's priceless.

In years past, whenever the tiny fishing village of Drowning was in dire straits, unlikely heroes would skulk from its darkest corners to lend their dexterous yet reluctant hands. These mysterious "Luck Uglies" used to be revered among the villagers as masters of skullduggery and subterfuge, but after an order from "The Great" Earl Longchance, the former peoples' champions became fugitives overnight. In The Luck Uglies, much time has elapsed since the Uglies' presence in Drowning; so much so, that they're presently regarded as little more than tall tales.

Riley and her best friends Folly and Quinn read all about the fabled Luck Uglies in a book they pilfer from a poet in town. The book is filled with all sorts of hearsay about Drowning and its surrounding territories, including the foreboding forest known as "Beyond the Shale" and the bogs known as, well, "The Bogs." The Bogs are said to be inhabited by a nasty group of creatures known as Bog Noblins — think hobgoblins, but way meaner and even way uglier. Bog Noblins haven't been seen around Drowning since even before the Uglies disappeared. Imagine everyone's surprise when one emerges from The Bogs and trundles into town!

The adventurous trio has so many questions. Where'd the Bog Noblin come from? Wait, we know that: The Bogs. But why, after all this time, did it suddenly show up? And have the nights seemed darker lately? And why have the rooks and ravens recently taken to roosting at the Dead Fish Inn? And wait, wasn't that gargoyle atop a different building yesterday?

Paul Durham's The Luck Uglies is the first book in a planned series with great potential. With a vibrant, fanciful world teeming with creatures to discover and adventures to be had, Riley, Folly and Quinn are given chances to become true heroes — not the kind that have to hide in the sewers to avoid the Earl.